Sam Pink - The No Hellos Diet

Suicidal thoughts always happen at the store.

(Not all of them involving a genie.)

*

Organizing the candy aisle with Billy, you realize suicide is not an option. Because the only way would be to try and bang your skull against the tilefloor hard enough. Only what would happen is, after one good bang you’d become disoriented and then get arrested and institutionalized. And then, with the eventual granting of a little personal freedom, you’d only be able to get the same type of job, where one day you’d be asked to organize a candy aisle.

You move a bag of chocolate peppermint candies forward, noticing yourself as a blur of white light on the bag’s gloss.

Look at yourself straightening a bag of chocolate mints, you dumb fuck.

Fuck yourself.

Make the candy look nice, you toy.

“Billy, there’s so much candy here,” you say, smiling.

Billy says, “Eyy do people still use the phrase ‘fudge-packer.’”

He’s looking at you, leaning against shelves of candy, flicking a box idly.

“Yeah I think so,” you say.

He says, “There’s that one, and I hear a lot of people say ‘Dirt road driver.’”

“Awesome man.”

“Heh heh, yeah,” he says. “It’s cool. Waaah.”

You’re still confused why Billy adds “wah” sometimes.

“Dirt road driver,” he says. “Heh heh.”

Then he starts listing employees at the store who are gay.

A large percentage of the staff is gay, and he starts listing them, as though he’s compiled important data.

“Yeah,” you say.

You always say, “Yeah” or “Uh oh” to respond to shit you don’t care about.

Which always causes a long silence.

Billy uses the silence to sing short songs to himself about whatever he’s thinking, or whatever candy he’s looking at.

Like, lining up bags of peppermint candy, he sings, “I got peppermint, peppermint — yeah yeah.”

Or there’s: “Who wants licorice, yeah yeah. Heh heh.”

The peppermint song is your favorite but there’s also a good one about how he’s tired, and one about gummy bears.

More rock and roll type stuff.

Billy tells you about how he records music and puts it online and a lot of people listen to it.

You say, “Awesome. That’s good, Billy.”

He says, “Like a thousand people listened to it in Australia.”

“That’s good.”

“Heh heh, pretty good,” he says. “Wahh.”

More silence.

The silence is my pilot — you think.

Because you’re an idiot.

Billy says, “Think if I ever had any money I’d start an online store called ‘stupidshit.com’ and just like, sell stupid shit, like, and people would buy it too because people love stupid shit — heh heh.”

“Uh oh.”

“I know,” he says. “Wahh. There’d just be all kinds of stupid shit, like where I used to work at the lotion store, yeah. And people would buy it from me, heh heh.”

He coughs.

It’s raspy.

Temple vein swollen.

Gray goatee.

“So you’re saying if you had money, you’d start an internet store called ‘stupidshit.com.’”

“Yeah ‘zactly,” he says. “Heh heh.”

You move bags of candy forward and think about Billy and whatever terrible timeline brought him to earth.

Thinking about all the terrible timelines converging and how they make a shape that looks exactly like you.

‘Zactly.

Billy pulls a few boxes of candy forward, licks the sores on his lips.

Billy.

He says, “Oh I fuggin love this fuggin one candy right here.” Then, like he’s talking to himself, he says, “Oh but I can’t eat it. Yeah because my teeth are rotten to bits.” He pronounces ‘rotten’ like ‘rah-in.’

“What is it,” you say.

He looks at you, confused. “Oh, I don’t know, they’re just like—” shrugs, “—rah-in, falling apart, y’know. Fuggin rah-in.”

“No, what kind of candy are you talking about,” you say. “Which one.”

He turns and makes an oval shape with the forefinger and thumb on each hand. “It’s like those things with the stuff in them,” he says, squinting over the frames of his glasses. “They had the one mascot that was a tiger I think. Or a bumblebee, I’on’t know.”

“Oh. Awesome.”

“Heh heh, yeah ‘zactly,” he says, going back to organizing.

“But you’re saying you can’t eat them because your teeth are rotten to bits.”

“Yeah ‘zactly,” he says. “They’re fuggin rah-in.”

“Now as I heard it, you said they’ve rotted so bad they’ve become bits, or something of that sort.”

“Rah-in and falling out, ‘zactly, heh heh. Wah.”

Billy tells you a story about drinking too much and falling into a kiddy pool in someone’s backyard.

You say, “Uh oh.”

He laughs.

Arranging bags and boxes of candy.

Why does there need to be this much candy — you think.

You’re confused.

But you arrange the candy.

Not to help the store, but to make sure people know you’ve been there.

Billy says, “Heh heh.” Then, in a Russian(?) accent, he says, “Give me dat microfilm.”

You don’t respond in any way except looking at the cuts on your hands, and the gray dust on your palms from tying wire around crushed boxes earlier.

(Wrapping up the wire always leaves metallic dust. You call it “gorilla hands.”)

“Give me dat microfilm,” Billy says again.

He’s laughing in a whiny rasp, looking at you over the tops of his glasses.

You say, “Are you asking me something. I mean.”

He clears his throat. “No, that’s what every Russian character in every old American spy movie used to say,” he says, smiling. “Give me dat microfilm. Heh heh.”

He’s holding back a little on the laughing.

The sores on his lips hurt — you think. Or he’s trying to hide his teeth. Oh, Billy.

If you were Jesus, you’d heal his sores with a kiss and make him teeth from your bones.

No, you’d nail him to a cross with balled fists for hammers.

“Give me dah microfilm,” Billy says loudly. “Heh heh, that’s what they always said.”

“Microfilm.”

“Heh heh, yeah,” he says. He moves packages of gum with one hand, raising a fist with the other. “Giff me duh microfilm.”

You say, “Billy, you’re just too much fun.”

And there you are, the blur of white light on the bag’s gloss.

You silently say hello, and move the candy closer.

“Heh heh — dat microfilm,” Billy yells, shaking his fist. “Heh heh.”

Organizing the candy aisle, you say, “Give me dat microfilm” over and over to each other.

Maintaining a conversation by saying the same thing over and over at varying intervals.

The same thing.

Over and over.

Laughing each time.

He says it.

Then you do.

Then there’s laughing.

The fucking candy aisle.

“Give me dat microfilm,” he says loudly. He curls all the fingers on one hand and holds it out at a child passerby. “Microfilm!” Then — immediately back to normal — he says, “Oh man, so I got here fuggin 43 minutes late today. S’a bummer, man. I have to walk fuggin five miles to get here and five miles back. Plus my shoes suck big time ass. Wahh. How many people do y’think are in Australia anyway.”

“Sing the peppermint song again, man,” you say, looking at the sores on his lips.

He laughs.

“Heh heh, I don’t remember it,” he says.

Billy.

Sometimes, you imagine him as a newborn baby lying awake in a crib and looking out at the night.

“Billy, this candy aisle is going to look so nice when we’re done,” you say.

“Yeah,” he says. “Should be good.”